


Loving You Forever Can't Be Wrong

by Theyna_Shipper



Series: Star Wars One-Shots [28]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Ben Solo Angst, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Ben Solo is not dead, Depression, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Gen, Just so y'all are warned, Magical Pregnancy, Pain, Post-TRoS, Pregnancy, Redeemed Ben Solo, Rey Needs A Hug, Sadness, Tatooine, sad rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:07:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25541839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theyna_Shipper/pseuds/Theyna_Shipper
Summary: Ben has sworn not to let himself back in Rey's life. She doesn't need that. She thinks he's dead and she needs to move on.But she's grieving. And he wants to watch, to make sure she'll be okay, that she'll move on.He'll just watch.Right?
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Star Wars One-Shots [28]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1637683
Comments: 18
Kudos: 102





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This baby has been bouncing around my head for a while, but I only just decided to write it. It was going to be a one-shot but became a two-shot. Please enjoy!

_"Loving you forever can't be wrong,_

_Even though you're not here won't move on._

_That's why I stay here."_

_~Dark Paradise, Lana Del Ray_

“What can you tell me about that girl?”

It’s cruelly cyclical. _What girl? The girl. The scavenger. Nobody. Rey._ And now, back to _that girl._ Because Heaven and Earth forbid he betray a flicker of emotion towards her. Force forbid he lower his carefully built walls a centimeter, give her a reason to look for him. He’s dead. Or should be. And he needs to act like it. 

The man serving the cantina frowns. “Why’d you want to know?” Why does this intimidating man in a hood want to know about the nice girl who lives on the farm? 

Ben shrugs. “Idle curiosity? She doesn’t fit in here.” He throws a couple credits onto the bar, more than he needs for his drink. “Well?”

The man can’t argue with credits. They’re more effective than any mind trick. “Calls herself Rey, Rey Skywalker.”

“Rey Skywalker,” he repeats softly. So she’s claimed the family that’s caused the galaxy more pain than any other. Maybe the Skywalkers will finally produce something they won’t need to be ashamed of. Good for her. 

“She moved onto the old Lars moisture farm, few miles out,” the bartender continues. “Abandoned since before the New Republic, but she got it up and running in a week. Pretty impressive.” 

Of course she had. Of course she’d been able to make something out of that hollowed shell of nothing. Of course his scavenger-

_Not your scavenger,_ he reminds himself. “Anyone else with her?”

The man glares at him suspiciously. “Just that little orange droid. But I’d leave her alone if I were you.” 

Ben nods noncommittally, and returns to his drink. Let the bartender think he has ulterior motives. Let him watch and glare. He’s just here to see her. Just here to make sure she’ll be okay. That he can leave her and she’ll go on living her life. 

And maybe she will. Moisture farming- she could be doing something worse. There are better things, of course, but he can’t judge. And Tatooine seems like an odd choice, but there’s history here. 

Then Rey, who’s been selling her water behind the counter, steps out so he can actually see her face, and he forgets how to breathe. 

Stars, she’s changed. She’s changed, and it _hurts_. It hurts to look at her face, because it feels like hers is the only face in the whole world. Like his life began the first time he saw that face, and ended the last time he saw it. Seeing it again feels like someone is trying to restart a long-dead motor. 

It’s still beautiful. It could never not be. But the eyes in it are sad, like there’s something missing behind them. Her skin is tanned and lined from Tatooine's harsh sunlight, and her hair is dry and sandy. 

He wants to trace those freckles, teased out by the sunlight, with his hands and then his lips. Maybe he could walk over to her right now and hold her. Brave those ten feet of space. And maybe some of that sadness will leave her eyes, and maybe a smile would grace her chapped lips. 

_But you can’t. You can’t have her. People like her don’t belong with people like you._ So he carefully returns to the walls in his mind, the ones that keep Rey from noticing, the ones that keep her safe. The ones he needs to hold onto until he knows he can leave. 

Then she shrugs off her cloak, and he knows he can’t. Because that’s his shirt. Pushed up past her wrists, belted at the waist, dangling almost to her knees. She’s wearing _his_ shirt, the one he must have left on Exegol, the one she must have taken with her. 

And so long as she’s holding onto that piece of him, she’s not moving on. So long as she’s not moving on, she’s not safe. So long as she’s not safe he can’t leave her. 

That’s why he stays. Find himself staying on Tatooine for days, then weeks, then months. Watching her, waiting for something to change. Something to let her go. 

But nothing does.

* * *

He works at the SpacePort, repairing ships and earning just enough for food and a roof. Ironically, it’s like the Jedi temple: renouncing all his material possessions. He tries not to remind himself of this. 

Most of his spare time, he spends at the cantina. Always wants to be there for when, early in the evening, she shows up to eat something cheap and greasy and sip the stupid blue milk they swear by here. She never drinks alcohol, maybe for some sort of stupid Jedi purity. 

He just watches in silence. 

“Say, what’s your deal?” The bartender asks one day. “You don’t seem to fit in here, come to think of it?”

What, the cloaked stranger doesn’t fit in at the cheap, rural tavern? Isn’t he practically a staple of the place? “Where do you think I’d fit in?”

The man studies him for a moment, as if he’d get anything out of that. “One of those political types, maybe?”

Ben snorts. “I’d rather die.” 

“Hah! Say, can I get a name to put this tab under?”

What name can he give? If he tells them his name, even just his first name, Rey will find him and she’ll find the truth. “Kylo Ren,” he replies drily. 

The bartender laughs and claps Ben on the shoulder, making him cringe at the touch. “Really though, just a first name.”

“Bail,” he lies, giving one of his many innocuous middle names. 

“Well, see you around, Bail.”

_Stars, I hope not._

* * *

Sometimes Rey’s friends visit. This time it’s Poe Damneron, the cocky flyboy that Ben still hasn’t abandoned his dislike of. Hence the dry, sarcastic voice in his head that watches the whole thing.

_Sure, Damneron. Just reach for her hand. Sure she’ll love that._

Rey snaps her hand away, recoiling slightly at the touch. 

_Or didn’t you know? She’s pining for a dead villain._

“We’re just worried about you, Rey.”

_Worried. You’re more worried about that droid. Just leave the woman be._

“I’m fine. Really. I just need some time to work some… stuff… out.”

“I know. Leia’s death hit us all hard, Rey.”

Ben squeezes his glass so tight, it shatters in his hand, drawing every eye to him. His hand burns with shattered glass and the sting of alcohol. 

“‘Scuse me,” he mutters and disappears to the ‘fresher.

Picking pieces of glass out of his hand, he tries to process what he just heard. Intellectually, he knew his mother was probably dead. But hearing the confirmation of that out loud- that’s different. It means he finally has to confront it: the fact that he’ll never get to say good-bye, never get to say sorry. Even if he sees her in the Force it won’t be the same. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into the blood-filled sink. “I’m so sorry.”

By the time he leaves the ‘fresher Rey and Poe are both gone.

* * *

He sees Rey smile a cold, polite smile plenty. But the first time he sees her real smile on Tatooine is in the marketplace, as he’s leaving work (where he replaces the hood with a mask over his mouth and nose). 

A scared child, probably no older than two or three, runs up and tugs on Rey’s cloak. “Mommy?”

Rey whips around, eyes wide. The child realizes now that this is not his mother, and begins to run away. 

“Wait!” Rey calls. “Did you lose your- your mummy?” 

The child nods. 

She kneels to bring herself at eye level with the child. “Do you need help finding her?” 

The child nods again. 

“Come here,” Rey says, boosting the toddler into her arms so that they can see the crowd. “What’s your name, sweetie? I’m Rey. ”

“Zara.” 

“That’s a pretty name. Let’s go find your mummy, Zara.”

“OK, Rey.” Zara smiles nervously. 

Zara tucks her head into the crook of Rey’s neck, and that’s when the smile spreads across her face as she looks down at the baby snuggling against her chest. 

It hits him like a punch in the gut. That this is what Rey is supposed to be doing: she should have her own family, her own little kids running to her with scraped knees and teary eyes, to be fixed up and kissed better by their ever-attentive mother. This is the life she can’t have, because she won’t move on, won’t leave. 

He watches them, as subtly as he can, to make sure Zara is reunited with her mommy. Really, it’s more to watch the smile until the last of it drains from Rey’s face. 

Eventually, a woman with a flushed face and two other children in tow spots Zara’s head in the crowd, and runs towards them. 

“Zara! Are you okay?” 

Rey returns the girl to her mother. “She’s fine. Just lost you in the crowd.” The smile on her face returns to the polite, pinned-on one. 

“Thank you so much for finding her! I was so worried.” The mother looks her daughter over before turning back to Rey. “Really, I can’t thank you enough. She could have been lost all night in this crowd.”

“I’m just glad you found each other.” Rey looks back down at her new friend. “Bye, Zara.”

“Bye Rey!” the toddler calls back. 

She watches the family with a longing look in her eyes until they’ve disappeared into the desert. 

Ben drags himself away before Rey can catch him staring.

* * *

The cloak and menacing appearance is enough to keep people away from him most of the time. His dour demeanor and non-answers repel the rest. 

He usually doesn’t encounter anyone more bold. 

“Hey, it’s Bail, right?” 

He nods coldly at the woman, who’s smiling in a dangerous way. 

“You seem lonely,” she continues, setting herself next to him. 

“I like it that way,” he replies, angling his body away from her. 

“I get lonely out here too.” 

He’s about to rebuff her a second time, when she reaches out and puts a hand on his thigh, and his throat closes up. 

The touch disgusts him. He can’t even imagine _looking_ at a woman other than Rey, and now she’s just- she’s just- 

“Come on. We’re both alone out here. You’re free. Just come with me and forget it all for a little bit. No strings attached.” 

A tiny, dark voice in his head tells him to say yes. If he’s resigned himself to living his life without Rey, why shouldn’t he say yes to something like this? No strings attached. Never see each other again. Just something to pass the time

Then she starts to move her hand, and the voice is silenced and he feels filthy for so much as thinking that. “I’m married,” he manages to grit out before storming out of the cantina. 

He doesn’t see Rey that night.

* * *

Rey is knitting in the corner of the cantina. He can’t tell what- the indigo yarn is fairly shapeless. Maybe a blanket? It looks soft. 

He’s glad she’s found a hobby, even if she struggles with the needles sliding and the stitches dropping. 

Ben knows her to be patient. She spent so much of her life waiting. But as she struggles with something so inconsequential as knitting, her eyes fill with tears of frustration, and eventually she stuffs the yarn into her bag and storms out, the droid clinging to her heels. 

He hates to see her like this.

* * *

Occasionally, he sees her in the market. Sometimes their schedules line up, sometimes they don’t. 

He guiltily eavesdrops on her conversations, to see if she sounds any happier. Mostly he just hears small talk. Until the day, fourteen weeks in (he’s counted carefully), when she decides to buy a string of beads from an old woman. 

“Say, what’s a pretty girl like you doing all by herself out here?”

_Why indeed,_ Ben thinks. _Why can’t you forget me and go?_

“I just have some things I need to work out,” Rey replies with a small smile. 

“Got any family?”

Rey shakes her head. 

“Married?”

_No, Rey. You’re staying loyal to a ghost. A ghost you barely knew._

“Widowed,” Rey replies in a throaty voice. 

Does she really think of him like that? Really consider herself a widow? His brain swims with the very _idea_. 

“Oh, you poor dear,” the woman sighs, squeezing Rey’s hands. “Was he in the war?”

Rey nods softly. “He died in the Battle of Exegol. Saved my life.”

And it feels wrong, to hear himself honored as some kind of saint by them. It’s not what he deserves. 

“He sounds like he was a hero,” the woman says gently. 

“He was,” Rey agrees with a tearful smile. “I hope the baby looks like him.”

No. 

She didn’t just say that. 

She’s not gently resting her hand on a tiny bulge in her stomach, so small you wouldn’t even notice if you weren’t looking. 

She’s not answering the woman’s questions about the baby, _his_ baby, smiling even in spite of the tears trickling down her cheeks. 

Her words aren’t echoing in his mind as he runs, _runs_ away, because he’s scared, terrified, of what he just saw, what he just heard. 

Rey is pregnant. With _his_ baby.


	2. Chapter 2

Tatooine is lonely, and filled with ghosts. And no matter how much the ghosts smile at her, or tell her she’ll be okay, they’re still ghosts. And they’re still haunting her. 

As if this isn’t bad, they haunt her dreams. He smiles at her from across dark rooms, embraces her with arms that feel achingly solid, speaks to her in a voice that’s clear enough to be real.

And when she wakes up, she reaches out to find the man whom she’s certain will be lying next to her, only to be met with a cold, empty bed. 

She came here to be alone. To grieve. To let the past die. But the past is obstinately clinging to her mind. 

_”Take care of yourself, sweetheart.”_

Ben’s voice refuses to be chased out of her head. 

So she spends her days sweating and working and trying and failing not to get trapped in her own head. 

And then after a month, she learns of the baby. She honestly wouldn’t have noticed by herself, because when _hasn’t_ she felt sick and exhausted since Ben died. But BB-8, bless that persistent little droid, forces her to get looked at by the one med-droid on the entire outpost. 

And then there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Ben’s baby, growing inside her, tiny but healthy and alive. Maybe it will have his eyes. Maybe it will have his hair. Maybe it will have those funny big ears that have sparked stories from Lando and Chewie about how self-conscious Ben used to be. Maybe, maybe she’ll finally have the family that fate stole from her. 

But even this doesn’t fill her life the way it feels like it should. She can’t stop thinking about everything she doesn’t have. The universe seems to be taunting her with all of it. The strange man around the outpost who walks and and works in ways that remind her of Ben. The visits from people who could never come _close_ to understanding what she’s going through. The nosy but well-meaning locals who all wonder what a ‘nice girl like her’ is doing out there. 

The child that tugs at Rey’s clothes, nervously looking for her mother, feels like a bizarre ghost from both the past and the future. But when the girl lets herself into Rey’s arms and trusts her to carry her through the crowd, it makes her smile for the first time in too long. It makes her thing that maybe she could do this, be a mother. And when the child is returned to her family, it makes Rey glance down at her stomach, as if to make sure _her_ baby is still there. 

“I can’t wait to meet you,” she whispers, even if the baby can’t hear her. 

She goes home, and sleeps peacefully for once.

* * *

Maybe Ben is always in her thoughts because they never got a proper end to their story. It ended in the middle of a sentence, without either of them getting to finish their thoughts. Maybe if she writes their ending properly, she won’t feel so empty inside. 

So she writes letters. Handwriting them the way she knows Ben once did. She writes down her feelings for him in the hopes of laying them to rest. She writes about Tatooine, and why she came here, and finally about the baby. The baby who will never get to meet its father, but hear his name every day. 

Except once she starts writing, she can’t stop. It becomes an addiction, something she has to do at least once a week. She forgets that once she puts her letters in their box he can’t read them. She never gets the ending to their story, because as she keeps writing she realizes they never got a proper beginning. 

It’s like falling into quicksand. The harder you struggle, the faster you die.

* * *

Getting ready for the baby is hard. Rey doesn’t really know what she’s supposed to do. Babies were rarely born on Jakku, and survived past infancy even more rarely. She still hasn’t told any of her friends that she’s pregnant- there would have been far too much to explain- so she can’t go to them for help.

Still, with the help of BB-8, some women from Tatooine, and just plain instinct and common sense, she gets started on the right foot. She’ll need toys and blankets and clothes and nappies, and bottles and towels and soaps that won’t sting. It’s so much she starts to feel overwhelmed. Taking everything one day at a time, she starts making blankets. Something easy but necessary to give her a sense of purpose. 

Except knitting is harder than it looks, and after too many dropped stitches and frayed ends she feels like giving up and running away from it all. 

Sooner or later, she always picks up the needles again. As the bulge in her stomach, tiny as it is, grows big enough to see, she feels a sense of urgency, and realizes that sooner or later she’ll have to ask for help. 

She just doesn’t know how.

* * *

Everything falls to pieces when Rey feels something in the Force. It’s not even a special day when it happens. It’s just a normal day, four months after she came to Tatooine. 

She’s talking to one of the locals, an old woman selling jewelry. The woman asks about Rey’s family, and then if she’s married. There is no way for Rey to give an appropriate answer to that, not one that expresses the magnitude of her love and her loss. 

“Widowed,” she replies sadly. It’s the first time she’s talked about Ben to anyone but herself, and it’s an odd sensation. She can’t decide if she likes it or not. 

Then Rey finds herself talking about the baby, and that’s when she feels it. A change in the Force that calls out to her. Rushes in to fill the hole in her heart.

She feels Ben.

* * *

For Ben, the _how_ isn’t so much the question. Force-healing in the Dyad- _’A bond strong enough to create life’_ \- is fraught and unstudied. For all he knows, her pregnancy is entirely possible, even likely. 

And now Rey is going to have her baby, _raise_ her baby on this godforsaken tomb, if no one stops her. 

This changes things for him. Does he owe her help? Should he come back for the sake of the baby? Surely he can’t come back and announce himself again after leaving her alone for three months. She’ll be furious, probably won’t want him anywhere near her. But he can’t leave her and the baby alone on Tatooine. 

_I hope the baby looks like him._ Like hell she does. Because the last thing this world needs is another screwed-up Solo child. The last thing that child is his screwed-up father.

He just needs to leave, right? Maybe she’ll move on if he’s not watching her. He just needs to make sure she’ll move on. Just check on her one last time. 

But in his panic, he’s forgotten to mute himself in the Force. And now his soul is crying out to her, exposed and too loud to ignore. And when he stands up, it’s to look directly into her tearstained face. 

“No,” she says in a throaty voice. “No, you can’t be real.”

He doesn’t know what to say to this. To her. He never even _dreamed_ of letting himself see her again, yet here she is. 

“If you were real, you wouldn’t have left me.” But she doesn’t believe what she’s saying. 

“Rey,” he whispers. “Rey, I-” He can’t even begin to explain himself. 

“Do you have any _idea_ what I’ve been through?” she sobs. “I thought you were gone. I thought you were dead. I wished _I_ was dead. And you’ve just been here the whole time? _Hiding_ from me?”

“You were better off without me,” Ben chokes. 

“No, I wasn’t!” She’s screaming, and people are staring, and Ben wants nothing more than to break down and cry. “I was _miserable_. I was alone, and abandoned, and sick, and I _needed_ you, Ben.”

“And I would only have made that worse,” he insists. “Rey, I’m not meant for this- for you-” 

“I thought you loved me,” she sobs. “I guess I was wrong.” 

“I do love you. That’s why I have to leave you.” He grabs her arm and shoves a bag of credits- everything he has- into her palm. “Take this. Go somewhere nice. Chandrila, Corellia, Naboo. At least somewhere with a doctor, for goodness’ sake. You can have the baby there. Forget about me. Live your life, free. Please.” 

He expected lots of reactions. But he didn’t expect Rey to slowly let the credits fall to the ground while staring at him in confusion. “How did you know about the baby?”

There’s no lie that will fix this. “I heard you,” he admits. “Telling the bead woman.” 

Rey shakes her head. “How long have you been following me?”

The whole ridiculousness of the past three months crashes down onto him. “Fourteen weeks.”

“Fourteen weeks. You’ve been watching me for fourteen weeks. And you never said _anything_?”

“There was nothing for me to say.” He picks up the credits and forces her to take them. “Go. You don’t want me.”

“You know what?” Rey calls as he storms away. “Maybe this is karma.” 

Ben turns around. “What?”

“I walked away from you so many times. Maybe I deserve to have you walk away from me.”

He doesn’t walk away. He runs away.

* * *

“Gone,” the bartender grunts. 

_Gone._ “When? When did she leave? Where?”

“How the hell should I know? She came with a weeks’ worth of water this morning and said she was leaving the planet. Good for her, this place is a death trap.”

Ben can’t argue with that. But Rey’s leaving? With no trace of where she’s going? He has to find her. 

_Isn’t this what you wanted?_ A voice in his head taunts. _For her to leave you? Forget about you?_

Not like this, never like this. Angry and hating him, thinking he’d abandoned her. At the very least, he owes her an apology. 

It’s only twelve. If he hurries, maybe she’ll still be there. He sprints out of the cantina and to the space port, not looking back or slowing down for the whole of the ten minutes. 

He’s just in time, thank the Maker. “REY!” he shouts as she steps onto the ramp of a ship. His lungs gasp for air after his mad dash. 

Rey freezes for a moment, the steps off the ramp and starts walking towards Ben. “I leave in five minutes,” she says gruffly, not making eye contact. “What do you want?”

“I’m sorry,” he gasps. “I should have found you. I shouldn’t have followed you. I should have-”

Rey wraps her arms around him so fast he gets the wind knocked out of him. “You came back.”

“I’ll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise. Always.” The name feels natural, like something he might have called her in another universe. 

“Come with me,” she whispers. “It’s not too late.”

He wraps his arms tight around her, burying his head in her hair. It seems impossible that she can be so small, and yet fill his arms perfectly. She fits there just right, and he’d like to keep her there forever. 

Reluctantly, Rey pulls away. “We can still try to get you on the ship.”

“Rey, I’m not sure-”  
This wasn’t the plan. But with Rey in his arms, his resolve is non-existent, and staying with Rey seems like the only possible way to live. He can’t believe he held out this long. 

She puts her finger over his lips. “We’ll figure it out. But I need you. With me.” She stands on tiptoes to press a quick kiss to his lips. “Come on.”

He follows her to the ship in a daze, his lips still burning from the kiss.

* * *

A tiny dark-haired baby sleeps in an indigo blanket. Her head rests delicately against her mother’s chest as her parents bring her home to their apartment on Naboo. 

“Welcome home, Shmi,” Rey chirps softly. The baby, named for the matriarch of the Skywalker clan, squirms slightly at being awoken. 

“Shmi Leia Skywalker Organa-Solo,” Ben sighs as his wife and daughter settle on the couch. “That’s quite a name you’ve got there.”

“I like it,” Rey replies, pressing a kiss into her baby’s hair. “It’s powerful. And she won’t use all of it all the time.”

“A powerful name for a powerful girl,” he agrees. “Welcome to the family, Shmi.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are my life <3


End file.
